When I tested making fire stronger it killed regular enemies and bosses in one hit, which made improving it impossible. whereas the ice spell hits all around you and can do even more damage against bosses than the fire spell. I was never able to figure out why this happens.
As for removing double on holy water and triple subweapons, the whole point of the patch is to make such tactics unnecessary to complete the game. It may seem like this change is a downside at first, but I have given every character the tools they need to do well without them, which I believe makes boss fights more exciting. I managed to beat the game on normal and hard modes using every character without savestates and found the difficulty to be reasonable, although it did require me to change my strategy on some bosses.
If you can think of any other way to make fire good enough to be worth using instead of ice and lightning, I am willing to consider putting it back in the game.